An analysis of spatial orientation test performance

Spatial Orientation ability correlates with important criteria such as achievement in calculus and physics, but this ability has not been investigated systematically. Performance on individual items adapted from a standard test of Spatial Orientation was studied. Subjects judged whether aerial views would be seen by an observer oriented in various ways. For practiced subjects, the time to answer items was an approximately linear function of the number of abstract spatial dimensions on which the aerial view and the observer's orientation were consistent. Practice led to lower error rates and lower intercepts for the response-time functions. Subject's ability correlated with the linearity of their response-time functions suggesting that lower ability subjects fail to code one or more spatial dimensions. A model specifying serial, self-terminating comparison of abstract spatial dimensions is proposed as an ideal which subjects approach after practice.